Would you rather live next door to five three-story apartment buildings? Or would you rather live next door to a bar? Or a strip mall? Or an office building?

Residents of the Liberty Village senior-citizens complex should be asking themselves those questions.

Those who live at the Northwest Peoria facility have been protesting apartments proposed to be built on vacant land immediately north of them. A charter bus carried more than 40 Liberty Village residents to the Peoria City Council meeting last week.

Deferred for a fifth time there and then were land-use changes that would allow the apartments to be built. Despite city staff’s recommendation to deny those changes, the Planning and Zoning Commission approved them by a 4-3 vote.

Current zoning for the four-acre property south of The Shoppes at Grand Prairie is split. The northern portion is zoned for commercial purposes. The southern portion, closest to the Liberty Village residences, is zoned for offices.

The Liberty Village people cited noise, traffic and property values as reasons they don’t want apartments in their neighborhood. A look at city ordinances reveals the following businesses permitted in one or both zoning areas right now:

Arguably, many of those uses might generate more traffic and noise than might 60 apartment units with relatively high rents (about $1,200 monthly). Most of those uses don’t require approval from any civic body.

The Liberty Villagers have every right to question and protest whatever might be constructed next door. After all, they were there first.

But should this apartment project fail, they also should remember the next proposed use for that property might be just as disruptive. Maybe worse. (N.V.)

Who’s got the buttons?

One month into its run, the City Council road show appears to be a hit. Even if parts of it resemble a 1970s TV game show.

The two meetings the council has held since its chambers closed for remodeling have been relatively free of glitches. One of them, held in the Peoria County Board meeting room, was in a controlled environment. But each month through the end of the year, the council will meet at neighborhood sites.

The first such site was Valeska Hinton Early Childhood Education Center. That meeting last week, held in a multipurpose room at the South Peoria school, attracted a standing-room crowd of more than 100.

Page 2 of 3 - “It’s nice to be able to get out into the districts and talk about the issues in front of different audiences,” City Manager Patrick Urich said. “People that may come out that may not come Downtown for a whole host of other reasons. This gives us the opportunity to do that.”

City Clerk Beth Ball, Chief Information Officer Sam Rivera, Public Works Director Mike Rogers and their staffs have done a great job making each portable site as home-like as possible. The logistics of such an undertaking can’t be easy. It appears city staff has risen to the task.

One suggestion, however: Lose the voting buttons.

At Valeska Hinton, two plastic disks — one red, one white — were placed in front of each council member. When it came time to vote, each would press on the white disk for yes, the red one for no. They lit accordingly.

It looked like a cross between an advertisement for the Staples office-supply chain (“That Was Easy”) and an episode of “Tic-Tac-Dough.” With Mayor Jim Ardis in the role of host Wink Martindale, perhaps.

The lights didn’t go off until council members pressed the disks again, so some of them remained illuminated well beyond conclusion of the vote. Closer inspection suggested the buttons aren’t exactly of high quality, either.

In bigger rooms, some sort of electronic visual voting clue is warranted. But most of the places the council will be meeting aren’t that large. People who sat in the back of the room at Valeska Hinton weren’t able to see the lights easily.

For the next neighborhood meeting, set for Aug. 26 at Westlake Hall at Bradley University, perhaps a show of hands might be more effective. If it’s good enough for the Germantown Hills Village Board, it should be good enough for Peoria’s greatest deliberative body. (N.V.)

Working hard?

Such things are usually better for the PR pop than for getting anything done, but there’s something to be said for Rep. Cheri Bustos’ call Friday for GOP House Speaker John Boehner and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to keep Congress in session during the August recess until a final bill reforming the Veterans Administration can be passed.

It’s been one of the more substantive issues Congress has dealt with this year, and is clearly a matter of national importance.

Page 3 of 3 - Of course, the same could be said of many issues lawmakers haven’t dealt with yet during the year, from immigration reform to comprehensive overhaul of the tax code. Oh, yeah, and there’s a federal budget to complete too.

There’s plenty Congress could get done — if, in an election year, members could muster the political will — with some additional time in Washington.

What’s more interesting is the amount of time members of Congress spend in D.C. We grant you that they’re on the job all the time, including evenings and weekends, inside and outside the district. But in the halls of Congress? There are 112 session days scheduled for this year. Last year boasted a schedule of 135 days. In 2012, it was a scant 105 on the calendar. For contrast, Illinois schoolchildren — who always seem to have a day off — are required to be in classrooms for 176 days a year.

The further dirty little secret, if you look at that calendar, is that many days starting off a week don’t feature any votes before dinner time. Most days ending a week feature no votes after mid-afternoon.

Bottom line, there’s plenty of extra time for lawmakers to spend in session. (C.K.)